Ep. 899: Jim Heffelfinger, The Deer Preacher

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening, you can't
predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting
apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt,

(00:29):
First Light Go farther, stay longer. This is gonna embarrass you, Jim,
But you know how I'm gonna introduce him. Can a
man I'm gonna say, Joined today by the smartest man
in the woods, by the smartest man in the woods,

(00:50):
Jim Hefflefinger. You're lying right off the bat, You're like, Okay,
how about this, Joined today by the most well informed
man in the woods. Okay, Jim heffle Finger, thank you
for coming in. It's great to be here. Yeah. If
listeners of the show know that rarely does an episode
go by when someone doesn't say Hefflefinger was telling me,

(01:12):
or Hefflefinger wrote in to explain, or Hefflefinger is mad
about blank because he, like I said, he's the he's
the smartest, most well informed man in the woods. And
when we're talking about stuff, he likes to tell us
where we where we hit and where we miss and
Jim comes on. You've been on I don't know how
many times, this maybe your third fourth time podcast, yea.

(01:33):
And what we do is we work up a bunch
of things that we're gonna talk about, and we agree
that and we agree on what we're gonna cover, and
we're gonna cover a bunch of those today. We're gonna
talk about We're gonna talk about Jim's thoughts and current
research on a thing that we've brought up in the
past is like, if you eat wild gamey, is the
lead gonna get you? Is the lead gonna kill you?

(01:56):
We're gonna talk about this thing that pops up now
and then if that the argument that by having more
predators on the landscape we would see a decline in
chronic wasting disease, We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna
talk about a thing you might see pop up in

(02:16):
the news now and then trophic cascades, particularly in the
context of when wolves came back to Yellowstone National Park.
People came up with all these sort of fantastical ideas
about the trophic cascades that occurred in the park thanks
to wolves. We're gonna talk about have Aleena getting their due.

(02:36):
We're gonna talk about some ungulate stuff, but the first
thing we're going to talk about is the Rompola buck. Now,
first I want to clarify a thing I and I
grew up near where I grew up, south of mitch
But but my father had my father had met him,
had known him, had handled some of the deer he
had killed in the past. He used to measure bucks

(02:59):
for like commemoraive bucks to Michigan. And somehow I had
in my head I for years have said Rampaula. But
that's a that's a lure rapella. Yeah, it's cast and
cast Paula's Rompola. We're working on a project. Jordan Sillers,

(03:21):
who you might know from Blood Trails, is working on
a podcast about We're doing a series along along Away,
this series that I've been talking about for a million
years on the Rompola buck. And for those of you
that just tune in for the first time, I'll try
to keep it brief. But officially, officially, the biggest buck

(03:42):
ever killed by the hands of man was killed by
in Canada by a guy named Milo Hansson. But shortly
after that buck was killed a buck that would have
beat Milo Hansson's buck to become the all time world
reck typical whitetail was air road by a guy named

(04:04):
Mitch Rompola and then withdrawn from consideration. So we're doing
a mystery series on is the buck real or not?
Which side are you on? Right? And so I've been
we've been wanting to interview We've been wanting to interview

(04:26):
half a finger about this buck because you have you
spent a lot of time on antlers and antler growth
and deer and everything. And one of the questions I
want to ask you about, and this will be included
in the series, but just to kick it around is
one of the things that people point out is that
where this buck got killed in northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan

(04:52):
is a place that does not make big bucks. They
don't have they don't make Boone and crocodile like God
does not make Boone and Crockett bucks in the Grand
Traverse Bay area of Michigan. What do you make of
something like that?

Speaker 2 (05:10):
I've heard that, and I'm not an expert on the
whole Mitch from Paula Buck, I remember when it came
out around the Midwest. I grew up in Wisconsin, so
right next door, and and remember all the chatter about that,
and never paid much attention to it. Came back to
it more recently and helped Jordan out with the with
that series. And just from a basic standpoint of can

(05:33):
a monster buck like that come out of nowhere? And
and I I think it can. You know, it's a
matter of it's a matter of likelihood always when you're
when you're thinking about that sort of thing. But I've
seen cases in Sonora in the desert southwest where you
get you get a drop condition where all of the
antlers are a little stunted that year from nutritional restrictions,

(05:55):
and then out of nowhere there's this giant desert mule
here and you just wonder, how did he do that.
Antlers are secondary sex characteristics. They only get the extra
nutrition after the body gets what it needs, and then
it can throw off some extra nutrition to antler growth,
and so when they're nutritionally stressed, they don't throw that out.
And sometimes you'll get a buck that who knows why,

(06:15):
I found some good nutrition or has some kind of
genetics that is able to better deal with kind of
the environment, and you can get a monster out of
nowhere that that's not a reason to discount it when
you're talking about this case.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Another thing we're looking into in this series, and it's
an observation that another whitetail freak had made. And I
can't remember the number, but this whitetail enthusiast was saying
that one problem with the round pole of buck, it's

(06:51):
too perfect. And I can't remember the number, but let's
just say I don't remember. Let's just say at one
hundred and ninety inches, I say one hundred ninety inch tail.
He's like, once a deer gets that big, go find
me an example of a perfectly symmetrical buck that's that
big that doesn't have kickers.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
They're there, I mean, examples are there. I looked at
the because it was Michigan. I looked at the Michigan
state records, and the number two and the number seven
buck in the Michigan state records is actually this was
not Michigan state records. It was a Bunoncracker records, but
only from Michigan. Boonecracker records from Michigan. Number two in Michigan,
number seven in Michigan are in the one eighty one

(07:31):
ninety Boone Crockett range, and one has one inch and
five ace deductions and the other one has two inch
and change deductions. So you can get these bucks in
that range that are almost perfectly symmetrical. So again it's
not a reason to discount the buck just because it'symmetrical. Yeah,
So what's your gut on the whole thing? I for

(07:53):
a while thought he probably just wants his privacy. He doesn't,
he doesn't, sure, he doesn't want the fame, but having
the world record shot with an arrow, that's a tough
thing to overcome. That He would tell everybody about it,
show people in the back of his truck, talk to
some media, and then within a day or two shut

(08:15):
up for three decades. There's something something strange. And one
thing I don't know if you want any spoiler alerts,
but one thing I talked to Jordan about was the
way the bases the pedicles. They come out an unusually
wide angle. Sure, so you can have wide bucks where
the antlers come straight out, you see them in South
Texas all the time, but those pedicles really seem to

(08:38):
come out like on the side of the head.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Kind of odd to me.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
And one of them actually in the photo, and there's
not many photos. One of them actually looks a little
like a little different orientation than the other one. And
I wondered aloud to Jordan whether in past years something
could have happened to that skull and cracked it a
little and healed it and made those pedicles orient a
little more. Now, if he had done something with the

(09:04):
skull and cracked it, those antler times wouldn't be straight up.
They would be out because he bent it out.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
But they're not.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
They're straight up in that buck. But if that something
happened to that skull in the past that widened those
pedicles out, cracked it and rehealed, which there's cases of that,
and then subsequent antlers, the times would grow straight up
no matter what the orientation.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Repull up and put on his screen up here shot
of the round polar buck.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
So I've just wondered, And this is all speculation because
we don't know. There isn't any evidence that it's a
legitimate buck, and there's no evidence that it's not a
legitimate book.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
So we're all speculating. It's just all speculation.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
So as long as we're speculating, those pedacles, if that
skull was damaged somehow and the pedicles were wider, and
then subsequent antler development made those times go straight up.
It would account for that. I mean, it's a theory,
but it would account for kind of the unusually wide
pedicles coming out of the skull. And I find it
strange that he talked to the media for a day.

(10:03):
He showed people the buck. It was apparently solid antlers.
Other people saw it in the battle.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
There's guys, there's yeah, there's a lot. There's there's a
lot to the solidness of the end. Are you able
to do that or no? Go on?

Speaker 2 (10:16):
So so then I wonder why was he talking to
the media and talking to everyone and then got home
and skinned the buck.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
And shut up for three days. It is.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Now when I look at that the deer's left pedicle,
uh right, when you're looking at it, but the deer's
left side, it looks like that that base is coming
out a little lower to me. It could be the
angle of the camera, could be anything, but it comes
out kind of in the back of the eye, like
the eyes lined up with it, where on the other
side the eyes below the pedacle.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
I was looking at that that.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Asymmetry in that and wondering if something didn't happen to
the skull. There's even kind of a divot in the
middle of that skull. Wonder if something didn't happen and
then it regrew normal antlers, but would account for that
wide with It's funny that he showed everybody, he talked
to the local media and then got home and skinned
it and shut up for three decades.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Why was that? And then when they went back to
the I mean you're familiar with all the like wild theories, yep. Yeah,
one of the wild theories being and I've sat on
both sides of this thing, and I and I don't
want to do too much like we're we're really we're
doing a lot on this, okay. But one of the

(11:32):
wild theories is people have looked at the ears, the
difference between the way the ears lay, the difference between
the positioning of the eyes. You can see it all here.
We got it pulled up coloration issues, right, And a theory,
a theory is that he skinned that head back and

(11:54):
put that rack on. He had made that rack and
he installed that rack on that buck. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
I don't well, I don't think he could have fabricated
he didn't. There's no evidence he has any experience in
doing any that sort of thing, and he's shot a
lot of big bucks. It wasn't unusual that he would
shoot a big buck. So I'm leaning more towards that
it possibly being a legal harvest, but maybe not eligible,
and he knew that, and so he would rather just

(12:20):
be quiet and have it be a missisis now eligible
because the skullplate was cracked, Possibly that's the theory. But
he came home and then you know, he was somewhat
of a taxidermist, and when they came to measure the buck,
he had it almost fully mounted on a shoulder mount,
he had the cape on it, he had the if
you look at the pictures of them actually measuring it
that day, the skull plates covered by fur, and he

(12:43):
left Apparently he left the back open. There's no photo
of the back that I've seen. He left the back
open so that they could inspect the skull plate. But
from the photo that I look at, the whole skullplates covered,
they could only I would guess, see the back of
the skull plate. So how would they be able to
evaluate if something was funny with that middle suture where
the bones come together.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
That would be covered. From what I see in the photos,
it would be covered. Yeah, well, stay tuned, folks, this
it's gonna be good. Man. I'm excited about it. Theories
is all I'm doing. No, that's great, it's great. Keep
keep coming. And then again, we've done, We've done people
like we've called out looking for people that have any

(13:24):
kind of information, and of course that that offer always stands.
Let's jump to the next thing. No, man, is that
our hunter's all going to die from lead poisoning. I don't.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
I don't think they have been lead poisoning. I mean,
you don't ever hear in the medical profession about one
of the dangers of lead exposure is eating game meat
shot with lead ammunition. The medical profession doesn't seem to
know about this, apparently because all of the bird, all
of the bird enthusiasts, are all concerned about hunter's health
and what they're feeding their children. Yeah, let me let

(13:55):
me set this up a little bit. You probably remember
when this has happened. It was some years ago.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Scattered around on the internet, all these photos where they
were doing like X rays of deer carcasses that have
been shot by rifles. Okay, and you look at these
carcasses and you see that that that those bullet fragments
really scatter and travel around. They do, and so you'd see,
you know, let's say it's an X ray of a

(14:23):
deer's rib cage scapula, and you can see the area
where the bullet hit. But then you see all these
little bright spots and they're metallic fragments that were I
guess they could get in the vascular system and move
a little bit. They kind of explode outward and move
a little bit. And it and and that, among other things,
really got people talking about the impacts of lead consumption because,

(14:48):
as you know, there's all this stuff about child development
and like you hear about like whatever, kids eating lead paint,
lead pipes, leeching water into lead, and is very staunch
position on you know, all the lead warnings. You can't
buy anything that doesn't come with some lead warning. For California,
you buy a lead headed jig, and it's got a

(15:08):
warning about how the lead headed jig is gonna kill you.
So there's definitely like an alarm, a sense of alarm
about consumption of lead. But it carried over into this
idea that that there's all this lead contamination out there
and gamey and you even now will see instances where
a state might say we're no longer accepting venison donations
because of the risk of lead. It's well documented that, well,

(15:33):
maybe you'll counter this, but it's well documented that raptors,
the most commonly excited example being California condors can get
lead poisoning from eating game meat killed by lead bullets.
That seems to be scientifically accepted. Yep, And so it
jumped to, well, it must be bad for us too, right, yeah, yeah.

(15:57):
Let let's let me let me ask you like a
series of questions. Okay, what's your take on your personal
take the scientific understanding of like raptors? Okay, do raptors?
Is it accepted in your mind? Is it accepted that
raptors die from lead exposure from eating hunter killed deer carcasses. Yep?

Speaker 2 (16:20):
At the individual level, lead can be really, really toxic
to raptors. They have a different and birds in general,
they have a different digestive system, and so raptors are
very susceptible. They can get even a small fragment of
lead when they're feeding on an animal that was a
carcass left in the field, or an animal that was wounded,
a coil that was hit with a lead shot and

(16:42):
then it wasn't retrieved. If they get a little bit
of lead in them, it can make them sick and
it certainly can kill them. So at an individual level,
it's very dangerous. The problem is when you scale this
up and say, is this really a conservation issue that
should force hunters to switch to a non lead ammunition,
And you look at the data that we have available,

(17:03):
there is a population level effect of accidental secondary lead
ingestion by raptors from ammunition. But what I encourage people
to look at is not just the fact that there's
a population level effect, but what is the magnitude of
that effect? Is it a serious issue from the population level?
And when you look at research that's been done, there

(17:24):
were seven Northeastern states, they looked at eagles ingestion, They
did some modeling, and they determined that the having using
lead ammunition on the landscape dampened the bald egal population
growth rate by four to six percent. So bald eagles
all over the country are just rocketing up. They're doing
really well. Record numbers, trajectories going up their models showed

(17:47):
that that trajectory upward would be dampened four to six
percent if we use lead ammunition in those seven Northeastern states.
So I encourage people to think, is that a serious
conservation concern that everybody in those Northeastern states should switch
the kind of ammo they use so that ball eagles
can increase four to six percent faster than they already are.

(18:08):
Golden eagles, it was less than one percent. In fact,
another research in another completely different project in the West
looked and found that golden eagle population growth rate was
dampened by zero point eight percent, so less than one
percent effect on golden egle population growth rate. And so
when you look in Europe, they did studies on twenty
two different raptor species. If you average the effect on

(18:31):
twenty two different raptor species in Europe, which had just
announced a ban in Europe on lead ammunition, was right.
Just yesterday I saw that home like an EU ban.
I don't think it's I don't know, that's what I asked.
I actually asked, is this EU or what? And I
don't know. I didn't get the answer. But in twenty
two different raptor species in Europe, the average effect on

(18:52):
the population was that it increased using lead ammunition on
the landscape for big game hunting, increased mortality rates by
a half a percent using lead. So if you banned
all lead in Europe, the mortality rates would be a
half a percent lower for twenty two raptor species. So
to me, I'm wondering, where is this giant conservation concern

(19:16):
that everybody would need to change ammo. So it's a
long answer to the individual question, but I think it's important.
It is lethal to individuals. It's the number one thing
that's inhibiting condor recovery condor and endangered species, so every
mortality counts, and they're very susceptual lead poisoning, so it's
a serious issue within condor range. Arizona has a voluntary

(19:39):
program where hunters can voluntarily switch to non lead ammunition
or take their gut piles out of the field completely
so they're not leaving anything for the condors, and that
has been adopted by eighty eight to ninety one percent
of the hunters in Arizona, so it's very successful voluntary
program compared to other states like California that just have
a top down Dracconian ban on.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, so but I hear that. Is that explain to
me the idea that like lead going through a condor's
digestive tract is different than lead going through a human
beings digestive tract? Yes?

Speaker 2 (20:15):
Is it something to do with the pH they it's
it's pH with the acidic digestive tract. And it's also
the they don't have just a stomach like like we do.
They have other organs that the lead pellets and the
meat that they eat sit in there a long time
to dissolve in that that acidic environment, and it's the
length of time that that metallic lead sits in there.

(20:37):
So I hope we talk about different kinds of lead.
That's an important part.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Okay, So what is are you aware of cases? And
I feel like I've read these, but I can't remember
what happened. Where they'd go in and look at people
that have been consuming game meet their whole life, and
then go try to see like, well how much this person,
how much lead is in this person's system.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yes, there's been several studies like that, and it started
in North Dakota in two thousand and seven. A dermatologist
who happened to be on the board of directors of
a major, major raptor organization. He went into a food
bank in North Dakota, grabbed ninety three packages x ray
them and about half of those had lead fragments in there.
So he sounded the alarm. And people have questioned the

(21:20):
motives being on the board of directors for a raptor organization,
but he sounded the alarm. And so the Department of
Health in North Dakota tested blood samples for North Dakota
people all over the state. Had seven hundred and thirty
six samples, I think, and they found that those that
said they hunted had twice the lead level as those
that didn't, and that spread like wildfire. Everybody picked that

(21:42):
up and that hunters are poisoning themselves. They have twice
the lead level. What wasn't reported was that level of
hunters twice the lead level was about the national average
of lead for everybody at that time. It was one
point twenty seven micrograms were DESCO leader and the national
average was one point twenty five at the time, and
so it was twice a level of non hunters, but
it was still below any level that any medical science

(22:04):
has shown lead problems in humans, and in fact, the
reality was that those that didn't hunt, because it's probably
sparsely populated North Dakota, the ones that didn't hunt had
below average lead levels because the hunters had about the
national average lead levels.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
There's been that study.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I think one of the most important studies on human
effects of eating game meat with lead comes from a
First Nations up in Ontario where they looked at people
during the waterfall season. These communities were eating a lot
of ducks killed with lead shot, so they tested lead
levels before the waterfall season, they tested them after the
waterfall season.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
They found that.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
People that people that hunted ducks had a higher blood
lead level at the end of the duck season because
they were eating a lot of ducks and so they
were getting lead pretty frequently in their diet. But what
they found out in that study was that those that
were sitting at the supper table eating the same meals
but didn't go out on the hunt had normal They

(23:04):
did not have an increase in blood lead levels. So
it was something about actually being on the hunt that
seemed to increase the lead levels, not eating the meals
because these other people are eating the same meals at
the same table.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (23:17):
That the primers in shot shells and in pistol rounds
and rifle rounds the primers And here's where we're getting
in different kinds of lead. The primers have a different
kind of lead that's highly absorbable. It's organic lead compound
in the primers of cartridges. And that lead compound can
be absorbed through the skin. It can be absorbed through

(23:39):
your lung tissue by breathing. By breathing it that these
organic lead compounds that are used in strengthening plastics, clutch
shoes and break shoes and all kinds of different product
waterproofing products. They use these organic lead compounds because it
improves the product in some way. But that organic lead

(24:01):
compound is different than the metallic the inorganic metallic lead,
and so those compounds can be absorbed through the skin.
If you get me your digestive track, you eat something
with it on there that goes right into your bloodstream.
Metallic lead like what might be in a quail, a
number eight pellet, or a little fragment of bullet that
ends up in your burger. That's metallic lead that goes

(24:22):
through the human digestive system twenty four to forty eight
hours and passes through so quickly it doesn't have time
to dissolve. It's not sitting in there and dissolving, and
so that metallic lead Occasionally hunters don't get lead in
their system. Very often, but very occasionally. Lead coming through
the system and then leaving the system is not going

(24:43):
to elevate blood lead levels like an organic compound lead compound,
and so handling shotgun shells, breathing the gun smoke that
has some aerosolized primer residue, picking up your shot shells,
I shoot pistols competitively, and I'm concerned about when I
pick up all my pistol brass reload it. I'm careful
not to touch my face because I know that that

(25:03):
has prim lead primer residue. But I'll hold lead bullets
reloading all day long. That metallic lead's not going to
come through my skin, but that primer residue with organic
lead compounds can. So when you have these people talk
about lead is obviously a toxin. They're talking about these
organic lead compounds that were in leaded paint, organic lead
compounds that were in leaded gasoline. All of that stuff

(25:25):
that causes these human health issues was a different form
of lead. You don't have doctors talking about eating game
meat shot with lead ammunition as being a problem, because
if you look on the websites for like the CDC,
the FDA, the EPA, the American Academy of Pediatricians, you
look on their websites, they have page after page of

(25:46):
things that you should be careful of so you don't
increase your lead exposure, what kind of ways you can
increase your lead exposure. None of those websites say anything
about eating game meat shot with lad ammunition. It's just
not an issue in the medical profession. With one exception,
the CDC has added one sentence a couple of years
ago that said, if you're breastfeeding, you may want to
limit your eating of game meat shot with ammunition. So

(26:11):
why is it that the entire medical profession is not
warning people about this. But there's a lot of bird
groups that are warning people about it because it's the ulterior.
It's their ulterior motive just to try to save bird mortalities.
But I think we should talk about bird mortalities and
not try to use this red herring to as a
hammer to try to get laws changed, and I've seen

(26:34):
in Maryland, New Jersey the full court press to band
let ammunitions statewide in some of these states. Is this
human health aspect which is not really an issue.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Yeah, they're thinking about one thing and talk about a
different thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
They know that human health and children and lead poisoning
will resonate with people, and they're getting laws passed with
misinformation like that.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah. Man, it wouldn't be hard to find it. Just
shoot all the time, but never eat gained me. It'd
be interesting to look at their lead. Yeah. Well, use
me for an example.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
If you look at a bar chart of different studies
have been done with people that eat a lot of
game meat with lead, and the more they like. There
was an Inuit community that ate sea ducks shot with lead.
It was a different study than the other one, and
they asked people how often they eat sea ducks, so
how often they might be exposed to lead shot. And

(27:27):
it wasn't until you got to the people who ate
sea ducks daily or almost daily, that their lead levels
were up to a point where over a doctor ten
micrograms per desolator, where a doctor normally says where you're
getting this lead exposure from if you had to eat
sea ducks almost daily.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
For that.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
My lead levels are higher than that from my pistol shooting,
from breathing that smoke that has some of the primer
aerosolized in it, from handling shells. Mine was at eighteen
at one point and it's been at twelve micrograms per
desolat CDC used to use ten for the safe level.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
They don't do that anymore.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
But mine was at eighteen twelve, and then I started
religiously washing my hands after a pistol match and washing
my hands really good after I reloaded and handle all that,
and it came right down to five and six.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Oh you didn't.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
So that's where my lead exposure was obviously coming from.
And throughout all that high blood levels when I was
at eighteen, our family has been using nothing but copper
bullets since two thousand and nine, so I had these
high blood lead levels. I've been using nothing but copper
ammo at that time for fifteen years, So it's not
the lead fragments, and we eat game meat all the time,

(28:33):
but it's shot with copper bullets. And then I'm over
here reloading, getting my lead exposure. So when they survey
hunters versus non hunters, those hunters are they're making fishing sinkers,
they're reloading, they're shooting, they're doing a lot of other
things that are exposing them to the real dangerous sources
of lead, and the game meat eating is probably not

(28:54):
registering that at all. There's some very rare exceptions if
you eat if you eat game meat every day and
you shoot lead and you're you've got Burgers is more
of an issue. Burgers can have twenty around twenty twenty
five percent of the packages might have one lead fragment
in it according to some studies, and hole cuts like

(29:15):
steaks and roasts it's only two or three percent have
even one lead fragment. So burger is more of an
issue if you're eating burger like daily, if you think
you might be getting lead fragments more days than not.
And there was one guy in New Zealand that was
eating meat shot with lead every day and he had
super high lead levels. So there's there's extreme cases of

(29:36):
individuals like that that you see. Another strange case is
everybody has an appendix unless they've had it taken out,
and that's like a blind sack and the adjustive system.
And if you're a quail hunter and you're eating a
lot of birds duve and quail number eight shot. There's
been cases where a couple number eight pellets have dropped
into that blind appendix and then been trapped in there.

(29:59):
It may stay in there for years, and then if
it's in there for years, then it's going to start
absorbing some of that metallic lead just because of the
length of exposure. Gunshot victims have been shown too, especially
for some reason if it's near a joint, maybe it's
an emphatic system or something. A gunshot victim where they
leave a lead bulletin can have dangerously high blood levels

(30:20):
in a future years. So if it's metallic lead, passing
through your system in a day or two is not
an issue. If it's a metallic lead that stays in
your system a long time, it can be.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Man. When we were kids, we had the stuff to
pour our own split shot, you know, and we go
down to the gun range, sift the berms out, get
the shot out, melt it, separate the garbage from the lead,
pour the lead into the molds, making sinkers, no respirators

(30:51):
or nothing. Just doing right in the garage and then
you spend all day with those sinkers packed in your
lip like a jaw. Always kind of wanted to get
my LED tests, but I've never gotten to test again.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, I always encourage competitive shooters, a lot of them
aren't aware of it, to get it tested because if
you're not being careful, like I started to washing my hands,
it can be an issue. But the whole issue of
eating game meat. When you look at packages like commercially produced,
commercially ground venison, burger has a higher level people that

(31:24):
grind it themselves. They keep all those bloody scraps out
of their burger pile. You know, they're more careful about
what you're hurting in the burger pile personally until the
number of fragments and personally ground venison is a lot lower.
If you do the math and how many meals of
venison a family has, a family of four has, and
what percentage those packages might have one fragment that only

(31:46):
one person at the table gets. You do the math
on it, It's like someone might get a fragment once
a month. I did the math for Arizona using some
data that we had and maybe once a month, you
get an occasional fragment that passes through your system. If
you look at the reality and the science that's there,
it's not an issue. But politicians are not looking at
any of that. They're not interested in that. Someone tells

(32:08):
them that hunters are poisoning their kids, and they feel
like they got to do something. Yeah, get into trouble
with laws that don't make sense.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, okay, CWD and predators. Yeah, this is another example
of people. In my mind, this is another example of
people thinking one thing and talking about another. Okay, so
you will have I'm going to color this. I'm going

(32:36):
to color this heavily with personal opinion. Okay, and you
can walk it back if you choose predator advocates, of
which I sort of count myself as one. But like like,
I like living on a predator environment. I like having
the animals, all the native wildlife present. I get excited

(32:58):
when I see mountain lions, get excited when I see wolves.
I get a kick out of seeing kyotes and bobcats.
I'm not like an anti predator guy, but I also
am a predator management advocate and I try it. We
hunt predators, we use for products Okay, so I have
a nuanced relationship with predators. But I notice that people

(33:21):
that have a view that know that are absolutists that like,
predators should not be managed, predators should not be killed,
predator shouldn't be hunted. They probably never think for a
minute about CWD, oftentimes because most of them are not
educated on wildlife issues. They don't follow wildlife issues. They're like,
they're like predator saviors first and foremost, and they divorce

(33:43):
their love for predators from any conversation about wildlife management,
about issues of biodiversity. They are pro predator and that's it.
It seems like that group, that group of people is
all of a sudden now interested in chronic wasting disease.
Why because they're now saying, oh, you know how I

(34:06):
always felt that no one should hurt a predator, Well,
check this out. This is why if there was more
predators on the landscape, they'd take care of chronic wasting disease,
and we wouldn't have any chronic wasting disease because everybody
who's seen never cry wolf knows that they always pick
the sick animal and eat it. Therefore, we shouldn't have
any predator management any predator control because I all of

(34:29):
a sudden care a ton about CWD, and I would
like these predators to eliminate CWD, right right.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
So that's so that's exactly what happened. People are laser
focused on their favorite toothy animal, and they're always hungry
for and always promoting any notion of little information that
might indicate that these things are are renovating whole ecosystems,
they're changed the course of rivers, they're managing CWD for us,

(35:03):
they're curbing climate change, and they're just generally saving the planet.
I mean, if they if they can latch onto a
piece of information that supports that kind of idea.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
They run with it.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
And there's and there's a ton of reporters in big
cities that have no exposure to wildlife that that don't
really understand hunting culture, don't really understand wildlife management at all,
and they're and they're very eager to grab those kinds
of stories and say, yeah, predators are great. The predators
are just going to manage the the ecosystem and the.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
It's the urban journalist's wet dream, dude, Yeah, to see
they pop up, you know, And that's what happens like
spreads like wildfire.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Well, what what happened was a number of years ago,
quite a few years ago, people doing research found out
that mountain lions were killing a disproportionate number of CWD
positive meal deer, more so disproportionate from healthy meal.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Sure, And so that, which I have zero problem believing,
exactly makes sense, especially in the later stages of CWD.
Animals just are unaware. Even in the.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Earlier stages, there's probably cues that prayers pick up on
that we don't even notice.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
But animals a little.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Less strifty, a little less able to get away, like
a mountain lion's hiding in the bushes and charges a
group of meal there. If you've got the CWD animal
might be a little slower in detecting that flash of
fur coming out of the brush. And so there's a
lot of reasons why they can be disproportioned. If he's
ten percent less observant, Yeah, and it's going to come out.
And so people found that these urban writers and carnivore

(36:36):
cheerleaders grabbed onto this and just they ran with it.
And so you heard this everywhere, and that was just
the first little bit of information and then later on.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
But that within that and I don't have the time
to do this, but someone that studies the media, it
would have been interesting to go look and say, how
interested has this person been in CWD? Yeah, or a
number Are they historically interested in CWD or are they

(37:05):
just interested today?

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Because they just saw this, and so that bit of
information like started spreading like wildfire, and everybody started thinking
about hey, and they're just making bold statements about not
only like mountain lions are going to control CWD and
meal there, but carnivores are going to control.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
CWD in all the whole deer family.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
And so that chugged along and then people started people
started doing some research on that to look into it
a little further because that was a number of years ago,
and there was some modeling that was done. And if
you build a population model and you say, okay, we're
going to keep everything consistent except we're going to have
mountain lions kill CWD positive meal there at a higher rate, Well,

(37:45):
guess what happens. They're going to control CWD. It's just
a mathematical certainty if you just build a simple model.
There's some people that build a built a real complex
model and took a lot of things into consideration. They
ran a whole bunch of different modeling scenarios. Some of
the scenarios they varied where the predators killed CWD positive

(38:07):
animals at a higher rate or at a one to
one rate with healthy animals. Other things they varied in
the model is like, as CWD progressed in an individual
deer or else, does as soon as it gets infected
with CWD, do predators start praying right away at the
beginning of the phase of infection or does it ramp
up and they pray a lot more higher predation when

(38:29):
the animal gets sicker and sicker. And they could model
that into the model, and they did that. They varied that,
and they varied the overall level of predation on the animals,
and they ran these They ran thousands and thousands of
these scenarios. And it wasn't to see if carnivores we
were controlling CWD, but it was to look at under
what conditions would they possibly control CWD.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
And the paper of the research, I just want to
explain a thing real quick that That's why I make
sure people are getting when you're talking about this is
is imagine that Okay, imagine you have a white tailed
deer and he's it's a terrible winner and he's starving
to death and he's depleted, but he gets killed by coyote,

(39:14):
but he's probably doomed anyway. What do you call that? Right?
Is that? Is that winter or kill? Or is that predation? Yeah?
Do you follow me? So I get the point you're
making is is as they get like as an infected
animal gets near death, does it wind up being that
almost like that almost the predation event would almost be

(39:40):
a symptom, right, like a symptom of the disease being
being predated.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Yep, there's there's They call it approximate and alternate causes
of mortality. Some of the more recent research is actually
assigning probabilities to the different causes of mortality like that was,
and and through modeling that was like seventy five mountain
lion predation twenty five percent CWD. They're actually starting to
do things like that. But that's true when you get

(40:06):
to the later stages. The animal is probably going to
die in the next six months from CWD anyway, because
the only last two years once they get infected, and
so an animal takes it out that's somewhat compensatory between
those two mortality sources. But they did a model that
varied all these different things. Some of the model outputs
and the research paper will say predators can control CWD.

(40:29):
That would be the result, But then you read the
paper itself, and those scenarios where predators did control CWD
and kept it at a low level, the deer and
elk populations were cut in half, and so that may
not be an ideal situation for people that like robust
deer and elk populations. You know, maybe that's not a
great thing to have that situation. They had other modeling

(40:52):
scenarios where predators actually eradicated or almost eradicated the CWD
in that population. But the deer and elk population they
were gone in thirty years. They were gone, like nowhere
dear in elk. So they controlled c to D because
there's no deer and elk left in the model run.
This is and when you run a model, when you
run a model right right then, So the models are valuable.

(41:14):
You know, they say all models are wrong, some are valuable,
And they say that because models are valuable because you
can look at different relationships of different scenarios, and the
first result they got from that modeling was that predators
could control CWD into population, but under certain conditions. But

(41:34):
those conditions weren't operating in Yellowstone National Park.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
And what that.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Was was predators in the model that showed that if
predators preyed on prime age animals primarily and primarily on
infected prime animals, they could control CWD, But predators aren't
in Yellowstone. Wolves and mountain lions are preying on young
and they're praying on old individuals. They're praying on the
wrong classes of animals to actually control c to WD.

(42:00):
So they in their in their report, in their in
their paper, they will say predators could control CWD. But
people will quote that. People will cite that and say,
see they can. But you read the paper and they say,
but they're killing the wrong classes of animals to do it.
And so you have to nuance that, you have to
all take into account.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
But people don't.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
They'll grab what nugget they want and they'll cite it,
and you have to go to that paper, which most
people don't do, and and read in the entire paper,
like they can eradicate CWD. But that means there's no
deer and elk left, So is that valuable?

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah? Do you feel whatever the models reveal? I mean,
do you feel that it's helped. Like would you argue like,
let's say you were a man, you were a state
agency manager and you were tasked with or you like
the CWD ZR for an animal for a for a

(42:57):
state agency. You're the CWD guy, and like a lever
you can pull is how many kyotes around the landscape
and you're looking at all the things you have available
to you, would you go and be like, one of
the things I'm going to do is I'm going to
turn up that I'm going to turn up the coyote dial.
I'm going to turn up the lion dial as part

(43:19):
of my management strategy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
No, because there isn't any evidence that shows that making
those pulling those levers will improve CWD. I'm interested in
population level effects, not whether mountain lions kill disproportionately kill
positive animals.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
I'm looking at big picture.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Having carnivores on the landscape, does that make a difference
from having maybe also robust, healthy population in the carnivores,
but sustainably hunted a small percentage of the population or
compared to having no carnivores. There isn't any evidence yet
that chose at a population level that changing the management

(43:59):
or being the harvest of coyotes and wolves and mountain
lions is going to change the CWD trajectory.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Where do you sit on CWD these days? It's such
a constantly evolving thing. My own opinions, my own fears,
morph and mature, and you know, all the time, where
are you at, like just in a very general way,
where you at? I don't know. I'm not solidly on
one side or the other.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
What I think about is is and we've talked about
it before. I think forty fifty years of people in
the Rocky Mountain States eating CWD positive venison. And they've
done a lot of studies to see if there's an
increase in cruise yakov disease or any other variant that
might be related to that. In nothing, they've done intensive research, nothing,
no evidence that it's crossed over into humans at all.

(44:49):
But when I talk to my wildlife my disease expert friends,
they say, you know, mad cow disease created a variant
that went into humans in England, and so yes, we
we have this decades and decades of proof that it
doesn't cross into humans, but it would only take once,
and so that's why they CDC and most of the

(45:10):
disease experts will recommend not eating animals you know are
a CWD positive. And so I'm I'm I'm not on
one side or the other. It gives me great comfort
to know that we've tested this and it's not crossing
aman barrier. Yeah, a lot of testing.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
I know. I've always known. I ate a boatload of
it without knowing it, and now I ate it not
knowing it. But I found out after the fact. So
now I've two hundred percent No I've eaten infected me. Yeah,
but I didn't lose the sleep. And in fact, a
buddy of mine was there too. I think I told
I don't know if I told you this. I'm at

(45:47):
my buddy's house. I'm with a buddy of mine. I
take a buddy mind to another buddy's house. This is
this is a doctor lawyer couple, and I got a
buddy of mine. We go there and he, the lawyer
of the upple says to his doctor wife, not to me,
but to his doctor wife says, heads up, I haven't
gotten the results back on this deer, Like he discloses

(46:10):
to her, she doesn't do anything, she just eats. So
we're all eating it, eat a pile of it. While
later he calls me, He's like, man, I got I
just called you to tell you I got the results
back and it was you know, it's infected. And so
I was like, I'm gonna call my buddy now and

(46:30):
tell my buddy. But I kind of forgot, not kind
of I forgot forgot. One day. Months go by and
this dude calls me and no text me, and I
don't know why it's even on his mind, but he says,
have you knowingly eaten CWD positive meat? And I said,
I forgot to tell you. We both have, not only

(46:50):
that I have, not only have I And I expected
my phone to ring, no call. So I was like, Okay,
he's not alarmed. He's not alarmed.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah, I think I think it has I mean as
an individual choice, obviously, but it might have a lot
to do with how much venison you have in a freezer.
And I go to Texas and if kill three or
four deer just as a shopping trip to fill the
freezer full of venison. It's a little harder to get
a deer in Arizona, and there has been some CDBD
positive cases near where we harvests and we haven't been

(47:21):
getting them tested. Maybe that tells you something. I haven't
getting them tested at all. Now it's different too.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
I think.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
One thing that worries me is when you look at kurru,
which is another form of this kind of disease TSC
disease like scrapie and sheep CWD and deer crusei, yakubs
and humans. There's another human form called Kuu that was
found in some tribes.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
In Pampa, New Guinea.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
They're eating the brains of their elders as a cultural thing,
and they were getting these infectious prions because they were
eating brains. They were infecting themselves with this cannibal cannibalism action.
And so some of the anthropologists then figure that out
and a disease expert they got to stop doing that,
and then kuru went away. But if you read the

(48:05):
scientific papers, there were kuru cases that were like thirty
and forty years after the person ate the curu that
worries me a little bit. So so it's your choice
whether you want to feed your kids. I mean, I'm
not too worried about it, but if I had kids
around the table, that's a that's a different, different equation.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's too late for mine. Man. They're brought up on
deer meat. I mean, last night we ate quite a
pile of it. Okay, never mind the health human health,
population level, they were going to move on population level
impacts on deer.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, definitely, they wedocumented all over now they were not
in question.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Hasn't been in question for big buck impacts, you think. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
One thing that was interesting is one of the studies
in table Mesa, Colorado, which I should talk about more,
but one of the results they said in there they
had they had about forty three percent of the deer
head CWD, and they were studying them a couple times
through a couple of decades, and after probably twenty years

(49:06):
of fairly high prevalence rates like twenty five to forty percent,
they couldn't in all of the sixty four deer I
think they captured, they not one of them was over
five years old. They couldn't find a buck over five
years old. And I thought they didn't even talk about
that much. But that's a symptom of what happens when
an animal doesn't live more than two years after they've
been infected, and they're getting infected early, you're not going

(49:28):
to have an older age structure. Saskatchewan's got some game
management units that are seventy percent positive for seed. And
when you reach that level and you've got animal dying
after two years, you have to affect the population.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
There's no way you couldn't. Yeah, got it, got it?
You know. It gave me a lot of hope if
that's the right word, This idea that, yeah, that you're
going to have that animals get infected, they're always going
to die within a couple of years. The precinct. You
won't have old bucks. You're not going to have six
year old bucks, seven year old bucks, but early. We

(50:04):
mentioned the Hansen buck, yeah, right, and four years old.
Yeah that was a sketchbomb.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
But four years old, right, and this buck ever killed
was four Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Another thing about the another study that was done in Colorado,
the table Masa study area done by a number of
people in two thousand and five. They went in there
and they studied prevalence rates of CWD, what percent had CWD.
They looked at predation rates on the deer population, they
looked at causes of mortality, how the deer were dying,
and studied a couple of years, and they said, throughout

(50:35):
this period CWD was going up and up, and there
was a heavy predation on meal deer mountain lions on
meal deer. Not only heavy predation, but almost four CWD
positive deer were preyed upon for every one healthy deer
by mountain lions. So there's a differential predation on CWD
sick animals, a heavy predation overall, and throughout all CWD

(50:59):
levels kept going up and up and up, and so
they concluded in two thousand and eight when they published,
they concluded, even with a heavy predation by mountain lions,
there's still the mountain lions are not able to control CWD.
But then thirteen years later, some of those same people
came back into the same population, collected the same kind
of information, and they found that after thirteen more years,

(51:21):
now mountain lions were killing four and a half infected
deer for every one healthy deer. So still high predation,
differential predation on CWD positive animals, and the CWD the
percent that had CWD went from from twenty eight percent
to from thirty eight percent from to forty two So

(51:45):
CWD still increased with that heavy predation for thirteen more years.
But their conclusion in that paper was, we think, among
other things, predators might be assisting in controlling CWD. And
so people can cite that paper. But the reason they still.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Thought maybe it would have been even worse, That's exactly it.
So that was like with with with lions killing four
and a half sick deer to every healthy deer CWD,
but they hold out that, well, maybe it would be
even worse.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
It would that was their speculation, even worse. So I think,
you know, an alternate and alternate conclusion would be even
in that condition, they still weren't able to manage c TOBD.
It still went up. Now, the people doing that research,
some of them are friends of mine. They're good, they're
solid researchers. That was just their conclusion, and you know,
we don't all agree sometimes when we look at the

(52:36):
same data, and I'm not willing to take that speculative
step and say, yeah, they were probably controlling CDBD because
it probably would have been higher.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
It's too many, probably yeah, let's move on to another one, another,
another subject. If you follow wildnife, follow wildlife news, wildlife
politics and conservation news, you know that the Trophy cascade thing. Okay,
so wolves are returned to to release sites. You got

(53:07):
Yellowslow National Park, Frank Church ninety seven, ninety six, somewhere there,
And in a while later outcomes like that they have
transformed riparian ecosystems, and now like the rivers are returned,
the beavers are back, there's willows everywhere. You know, it

(53:29):
was a unbeknownst to us, it was a sick landscape
that is now healthy, all thanks to hand this handful
of wolves that are that are running around people doing ted.
It's the perfect right ted talk thing. It's very inspiring.
And then over time you see pieces of research coming
out that sort of have this, well, maybe it's not

(53:50):
that tidy, maybe that's not quite quite right. The last
one of these I read was the authors the trophic
cascade theory relied on some work done by some willows,
some people doing research on willows, and even the people
that did the research that is cited in the trophic

(54:12):
cascade thing part started saying, you kind of got our
numbers wrong. I'll correct that a little bit, please, that's
what you're here for. Yep.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
So, first of all, trophic cascades, if people don't understand that, basically,
a trophic level is like the grass is one trophic level,
the grass eaters and the herbivores are another trophic level,
and then the protors are another trophic level. And the
idea is you can you can take the predators away,
or you can add predators. And if you add predators,
there's less grass eaters and so there's more grass. So

(54:42):
it causes this this cascading effect through these trophic levels.
That's what trophic cascade is. And so and so we
brought wolves back in Yellowstone and ninety five ninety six,
ninety seven wolves were released. I think at total of
forty one wolves were released, and then just a couple
just about so ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
In ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Already there was a couple of researchers from the Pacific
Northwest that were in their measuring the tallest aspens in retrospect.
There's been a lot of scientific paper showing that their
methodology was biased. They weren't trying to be biased, but
it just was not randomly distributed sampling. It wasn't very
good sampling, but regardless, they measured the tallest aspen in

(55:23):
a bunch of these aspen stands. And this is just
they started in ninety eight. It was a year after
the third wave of release. The wolves came in and
they published in two thousand and one and they said
in that publication two thousand and one, aspens are recovering
in the Riparian areas and it's probably we're probably seeing
the beginning of wolves triggering a trophic cascade.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
So they didn't have any data on that.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
They just measured some palst aspens, which wasn't a very
good method of measuring aspens anyway, and they made this comment,
and once again the media picked it up and it
was a wonderful story.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Wolves were coming.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Back, brought walls back to the Yellowstone and now the stream
side vegetation. The aspens were recovering and doing great, and
that spread like wildfire for a number of years. And
then the first paper I saw with Matt Kaufman. Remember
you had Matt Coffman on the podcast with Monteeth. Matt
Coffin went and did some research in the two thousands.
He published in twenty ten with some people, and they said,

(56:23):
and they did a very good, scientifically robust measuring of
aspen throughout the park in a more robust way than
the original.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Can I wedge in here that just just make the connection.
The idea was that elk ungulates were over like we're overgrazing,
and so now that there's more predation on the landscape,
more animal predation on the landscape, it was giving it
was giving a break to the vegetation regime from elk grazing. Therefore,

(56:59):
the it's coming back.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
And recalling, and I need to clarify something I should
have started with that there's two different kinds of trophic
cascades that people have talked about in Yellowstone. One is
the behavior one is the density mediated trophic cascade. And
that just means there's fewer elk, so there's more vegetation.
That's just a real simple kind of relationship. And so
people will say, look, we brought wolves back, there's fewer elk.

(57:22):
We had nineteen thousand elk and Yellowstone two years before
the wolves came. They started declining before the wolves were released.
Actually for two years we had nineteen thousand and eight
elk two years before the.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Wolves back the days man and that dropped to a
low of four thousand.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
So nineteen thousand and four thousand, you're definitely going to
have more vegetation growing in Yellowstone, so that's the density
mediated That just means there's fewer elk, so there's more vegetation.
But the problem is people wanted to give wolves all
the credit for that. But at the same time, we
had a little handful of wolves at that time, but
we have grizzly bear populations increased to the that their

(58:00):
predation on elk calves was three times what it was
prior to that earlier increased three times. Mountain lion population
doubled in Yellowstone. Fires burned thirty six percent of Yellowstone
in nineteen eighty eight. That had huge effect on the
ecology of that We had one of the worst droughts
during that time. Shortly after wolves were released. We had

(58:22):
one of the most severe winners at that time. And
then we were hunting cow elk off the park in
Montana to help try to manage the Yellowstone population, and
we kept cow elk tags too long and too high,
and so hunters contributed to the population declined. Because all
this stuff was happening at once, and the people managing

(58:43):
the elk tags didn't really at the time, didn't know
that all this stuff was going to affect the population.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
So you're burst in the bubble of everyone that just
wants to blame wolves.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Right, and so you hear, I mean wolves are precipitating
this Trovi cascade.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
So that's the first one.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I think we can dismiss that wolves did not cause
that decline of nineteen thousand to three thousand. All those
factors did, so we can't give wolves credit for trophic
cascades because of density reductions in elk. So then they
very quickly switched to the behaviorally mediated trophic cascade, which

(59:18):
means that elk liked to hang out along the streams,
and wolves were hunting along the streams and they were
scaring the elk out away from the streams, and so
that stream side vegetation could respond because the elk were
scaring them out of there. They call that the landscape
of fear. But that first study that kind of talked
about that, which was actually part of the two thousand

(59:39):
and one study. First study that talked about that didn't
mention the fact other researchers have later that you know,
if you're comparing aspen that grow along the stream and
aspen that grow in the dryer uplands, the aspen along
the stream, we're going to grow a lot more than
the uplands.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
And that wasn't ever.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Mentioned in the original discussion of that, but other people
like Kaufman came by later.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
In twenty ten.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Not only did he measure the aspen in a more
randomly and more scientifically robust way throughout the park, but
he took the last ten years of locations of where
a wolf killed in Elk and took all those spots
and he mapped the landscape of fear. He mapped for
the first time because people talking about the landscape of
fear were using other metrics that weren't very direct, but

(01:00:22):
Kaufman map kill locations and then related that too close
to stream, not close to stream other effects and actually
had a map of very risky places for wolves to
be and not risky waste places world for l to
be for Elk to be right because of wolf predation,
and and there was when they did the analysis of

(01:00:43):
high risk areas and low risk areas for Elk to
be preyed on by wolves. They found no difference in
aspen regeneration in riskier areas versus areas that weren't risky,
and so he published that paper in twenty ten. That
was the first one I saw that said, hold the boat.
You know aspen the title aspens are not recovering in
Yellowstone because they weren't. And at the time there was

(01:01:04):
a sixty percent reduction in the Yellowstone elk population and
still there was no evidence of aspens recovering. And so
that really that was the first one I saw, and
I think it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Is, yeah, but that wasn't the trophic cast. The trophic
cascade Heyday came after that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Yes, and the trophic Cascate Heyday were the where everybody
was talking about it. They were all talking about this
behaviorally mediated They're all talking about wolves are redistributing elk
away from some of these areas, and then those those
streamside vegetations recovering. And then another researcher, Thomas Hobbs, came
in and he focused on willows, not aspen, and he

(01:01:40):
measured willows and where they grew and where the wolves were.
In his conclusion was wolves aspen are recovering. But wolves
have nothing to do with the willow recovery. The interesting
thing is you hear there's a the YouTube video that's
got forty four million views now about how wolves are
restoring the Yellowstone ecosystem and changing the course of rivers,
changed the hydrology, and bringing the beavers back was one

(01:02:03):
of the things that was peak trophic. Yes, that, but
the biologists brought the beavers back, not the wolves. Biologists
released beavers in seven drainages in the Gallaxon National Force
right on the edge of Yellowstone, about one hundred and
thirty beavers, and those beavers then dammed up the tributaries.
Changes the hydrology made habitat for willows to now return.

(01:02:23):
So beavers probably should get more credit than wolves for
trophic cascades in Yellowstone because of their changes in hydrology.
But beavers don't have the big public relations campaign that
wolves do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Another funny thing that I made the same point earlier,
This is about public perception. This is a common about
public perception about media, and not a comment about wildlife.
But the people that were so happy it's cynical to
point this out, but the people that were suddenly so

(01:02:56):
happy about willow regeneration. If you studied the media, I
would ask you, can you go find me situations in
the past where they were expressing their concern about willow
regeneration and can you show me where that they were
aware of.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
This or beaver's you know, they weren't concerned about beaver
as not being on the landscape.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah. So it's like it's it drives They're going through life.
They're not aware that there's an aspen issue. They're not
aware that there's a willow issue. They don't care that
there's an aspen issue. They don't care that there's a
willow issue. They've never heard the word riparian, but sudden
they hear that wolves have made it better. Therefore, I
now believe that it was a problem. But it was

(01:03:42):
the discovery day for them. Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
And it's interesting that the first two people that published
that paper in two thousand and one, they've been on
a campaign to convince everyone that wolves have been the
drivers or the triggers of a major trophic cascade. Just
they've published a paper almost every year in the last
twenty five years talking about wolves initiating a trophic cascade.

(01:04:06):
And they're unrelenting even with all of this mounting body
of scientific evidence that shows that that's really not true,
that the story is not like that at all, And because.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
It doesn't suffice, it somehow doesn't suffice just to be
like they're cool to have around, right, it's cool to
see them, they're cool to have around. They're like, I
need something more.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
We have to just the of my landscape, and we
don't need to justify large prayers on the landscape.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
They were part of the native fauna.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
We recovered almost all of the native other animals, and
we've got a couple more, and they happen to be carnivores.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
To finish up, Yeah, I think it's like the best
word I can think of it. I don't mean to
give it like a religious aspect, but the best word
I can think of it is I think of it
like it's a sin. I think it's immoral or whatever
to eliminate, to intentionally eliminate native wildlife. I think of
as like a sin against God and man. You know,

(01:05:04):
it's like I don't think it's right. Yeah, that's what
I think. It's. It's human. It's it's hubris, you know,
to be like, oh, there's this thing that's lived here,
it's always lived here. But I'm deciding that I that
it didn't needs to go away. I was like, we
can't be making that decision. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
David meach El David Meaches is the leading wolf guy
really in the world. He's been researching wolves for more
than six decades, researching wolves for more than six decades,
and he came and taught, uh gave a talk at
the University Arizona.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
One time. I picked him up the airport.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
We were at breakfast and he he said something to me,
and he said it later in his talk. He said
that the people that think returning this is the like
the largest wolf avocate, well maybe not a wolf fabricate,
largest wolf scientist in the world. He says people think
that returning wolves to Yellowstone created the situation, but brought
back the birds and the bees and the butterflies.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
He said that's more really religion that it is science.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
But he is quick to add that those people that
say that bringing wolves back is going to decimate all
of our big game herds in the state, he said,
that's more religion than it is science. The truth is
really in the middle. They're not going to be destructive
and they're not saints. And he wrote another paper that said,
and you've probably heard this before, but that wolves are
neither saints nor sinners except to people who make them.

(01:06:24):
So people want to make them out to be saints
and sinners and they're not.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Yeah, they within that they have an impact. Uh huh,
they have an impact.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
They sure and certainly and locally they can have an impact,
and we can manage that. We should be able to
manage that impact. But the two that have been publishing
trophic cascade papers almost every year, I think they have
twenty five papers I've read since that two thousand and one.
They just published one last year and in the abstract

(01:06:57):
it says that wolves trigger the strongest trop trophic cascade
in the world. This is just last year. They're still
saying this. And that was followed by a rebuttal this
year by some Yellowstone researchers people are making their living
researching the Yellowstone ecosystem. And it was a rebuttal and
the title of the rebuttal was flawed analysis invalidates the

(01:07:23):
idea of a strong trophic cascade in Yellowstone. I mean,
if he a heavy hitting title, that's like, that's as
clear as you can possibly make it. And I think
you in an email once said, let's talk about this
latest um. There's some kind of news article that said
that the trophic cascade stuff doesn't have scientific support. But

(01:07:45):
this has been happening since Kaufman wrote that paper in
twenty ten. I mean, this is sixteen years people have
been saying things aren't happening, Like the media is telling
you it's happening, and they're using good, solid science, but
nobody wants to hear that story. I mean, the original
story is so beautiful. I know it's not true, and
it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and so there's

(01:08:05):
just no getting rid of that. I constantly see on
social media how wolves have changed the ecosystem in Yellowstone,
and then once in a while someone publishes a paper
that says, you know, a lot of that's not true,
that the science just doesn't support that. And I've been
seeing that for fifteen years, but nobody people are still
telling the original story. No, there's no getting out in

(01:08:27):
front of that. It's too late. It's like a freight
train that left.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
As a writer who like as a writer that deals
in history and wildlifeishues and other things I will sometimes
hear a thing. Oh, hear a thing, and I'll get
really excited because it's going to be great for the
thing I'm writing. Yeah yeah, okay, and I'm like, that
is great. But then when I look into it and

(01:08:52):
I learned that it's not true, I feel a disappointment.
I do.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Yeah, I've been there before too, Like this is really
going to support what I'm writing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
You're like, really, that's a lie or that's like you know,
this thing that everyone knows is now I know is
not true. And I'm disappointed, okay, because I wanted the
truth to be other than it was. I will say
to wildlife researchers, which I have many friends that do that,
that they're in that line of work, and they'll be

(01:09:20):
talking about something they're doing, and I'll say, what do
you hope happens? Yeah? Right, And they're like, I can't
do that. What do you mean what do I hope happens?
Except but I'm like, because you're a human being, there's
got to be like, let's just be honest, there's got
to be some thing. I'm not saying. You'd ben the truth, right,
you're a person of integrity, but in your head there's

(01:09:42):
got to be I hope that this something happens. That
would be like of note, right, because you're you're only human.
And so the question I would ask is, if you
look at the people that started from year one trophic
cascades trophic cascades, would they have had it in them?
Would they have had in them to publish a piece

(01:10:03):
that said turns out there isn't one.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
A lot of scientists do that, and that's just a
matter of being a good scientist, because you're right, every
single scientist has bias, has things that they would love
if the results were this, because that would be that
would be great, especially if it's going to make big news.
I mean, that's how people get tenure and that's how
they get promotions in the university setting, is to make
a lot of big splashes in the news. And that's

(01:10:27):
what drives a lot of people in academia unfortunately. But
everybody has a bias, but a good scientist curbs that
and packs it away and just lets the results speak
for themselves. And in scientific papers a lot of times
you'll see here's our study area, here's our methods, here's
our results, and then we get to the last discussion section,

(01:10:47):
there's some leeway to discuss what you think the results mean.
So the results are the results, but the discussion section
there's a lot of leeway for researchers to weave their
personal biases in and interpret the results for you see it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
That's what you have to be careful of as thease.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
And that's where people peel quotes out of the discussion
section that are just speculation and attribute it to that
previewed scientific paper. But it's not something they researched. It's
not something in the results, not something they found. It's
something they think, which is not really science. Let's jump
to have Helena's.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Uh this this is something that some people might be like,
why why does this matter? But it matters exactly. It
matters to me. Everyone knows like you have Boone and
Crockett record books. Okay, how how was it an oversight?
How was it you couldn't shoot like you couldn't get
a record book? Have Alina? Yeah, I found this out

(01:11:44):
the hard way many years ago. I got a big
Have Alena. Okay, I shot a big Have Alena, and
people were pointing out like, damn, that's a huge Havelna,
that's a huge Haveleena? And I gone look and I
had no idea. I had no idea. I'd never entered
anything before. But I go and look, I'm like, what

(01:12:06):
it's not in here? But then I found like Safari
Club had it, and it was like, and admit to
hit though whatever the minimums for Safari Club. But I
was like, how could this noble little, this noble little
desert creature not being the Boonukracker record books? Good question?

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Arizona has had Arizona record Books since nineteen seventy one
has had Haveleena in there. But I thought the same
thing probably twenty years ago. And I'm good friends with
Buck Buckner, who is the vice president for North American
Records for Boona Crockett at the time, and I asked
him why is Havevelena not in there? And he just said, I,
you know, I don't know this. No one's kind of

(01:12:43):
made a run for it, no one's made a proposal
for it. And I started a file. And I had
a file Halina Boona Crockett early in my career, and
I'm going to do this is going to be my project.
I'm going to get I'm gonna get them in Boona
Crockett and then had a family and got busy, and
the file folder went farther and farther back into my file.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
What was in that? Okay, what was it? What were
you putting in your folder?

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Some of the Arizona like the Arizona records that We've
got a big data set of Arizona records like to
help inform what the minimum might be. And then and
then copies of what the Boone Crockett needs in order
to establish a new category, and those sorts of things.
So I'm just starting to have a file and think
about that, and then I and then I just it
just got away from me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
I never got back to it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
And then Nicole Tapman from New Mexico called me just
a couple of years ago, and she said, would you
write a letter of support from your agency?

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
That was one thing that was.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Required to get them a new category, because she said,
I'd like to see we can get Boon and Crockett
to accept have Alina and she's on the records committee
and I'm on the records committee now too, and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
I said write a letter. I said, I will clear
my calendar next week. Let's do this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Let's and so we got two people from Texas, two
people from Mexico. Nicole's from New Mexico, and me from Arizona,
and we put together a proposal that talked about how
these populations are signed typically managed by these state agencies.
They have a long history of records in some states
how popular they were. We've got fifty eight thousand havelina

(01:14:10):
hunters every year in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas harvesting
thirty three thousand havelina. This is a significant big game animal.
I mean, some people in Boonda Crockett initially said, is
that even a big game animal.

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
It's a big game animal. It's got hooves.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
What other hooved big game animal do you mount with
this mouth open and this big, ferocious roar. I mean,
they're cool, they're cool animals, and they're really popular in
the Southwest. They're really popular for non residents to come down.
So we put together this really robust proposal.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
You can call them in. I mean I could name so,
I can name reasons all day long.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
They're they're cool, and they're they're not invasive like Farrell hogs.
They had two young a year, once a year, not
like Farrell hogs, or they have a litter of ten.
Twice a year they'll have a litter of eight and
only ten survive. That's a joke among the Faral hogs people.
So we went to the proposal. We went to a
records book committee meeting and we said, here's but you

(01:15:07):
know where were talking about biases earlier, I'm bias for Helena. Well, yeah,
but did you have because you've got a couple of
hogs that you thought, actually, no, that you didn't have
told thirty years of honey, have Alena and all the
skulls I've measured that I cleaned. I don't have any
that make the book, so I don't have that.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
I got a booker. I need to go dig that
sucker out. Yeah you should.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
And actually, this year, entering in the Buona Crocket is free.
There's been a benefactor that will cover all entry fees
for all species until the end of December. So if
you've got a headline around that you haven't got into
the books, this is the year to do it because
it's free for you. You're not injured, no, so you're
just doing this out of the goodness of love. Have
Alena and I think especially in Mexico. Our Mexican colleagues

(01:15:52):
are really have more at stake of giving the havelina
a little more respect as a big game animal. I
think that's a big thing. Sometimes they're not given that
kind of respect.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
No, I even hear man like people I like, you know,
people people that I count as friends. Man, I'll hear
people really denigrate them and like, you know, talk about
all you know, whatever we shot a couple, left them
lane or something. I hate that kind of stuff. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
So we went to the records committee and we said,
this was before we did that proposal, and we said,
we argued our case, why have Alena ought to be part?
And some people are like, then we got to add alligators,
and then we got to add but there's reasons why
some of these other species aren't ready to make the book.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
And so we said, what's the logic there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
Like, there's some other animals that aren't in the book
that are still harvested. That was what they were thinking.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Like what about like you were setting up that you
were setting up a you were setting up a set
of parameters that other things would be there, would other
things would reach.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Nope, just have Alena just focus on have Alena, but
some people in Bunda Crockett said, well, if we do
have Alena, then we're going to get pressured to do
all these other animals.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
It's going to cascade. But it's not. There's there's not
the other animals that for inclusion be a trophy cascade.
Did you get that joke? That is a good one.
That was a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
So we asked the Records Committee, we're not asking you
to decide now, but let us come back with a proposal.
We came back with a proposal. They were pretty impressed.
The proposal was pretty extensive and covered everything, and they
had some board meetings they talked about it. They agreed
to include it, but they didn't have the minimum entry yet.

(01:17:29):
But we have over We have hundreds of Havelina skulls
that have been measured in the state record books and
sci to use as a baseline for what should the
minimum be. And so we use those those records. Roy
Grace from Pope and Young Club did a whole bunch
of legwork on analyzing that those data, and then Boone
Crockett Club then made the decision what the minimum would be.

(01:17:52):
And the minimum for Boone Crockett for and then Pope
and Young followed suit right after that. Because there's a
close relationship between two clubs. So Pope and Young accept
up to them, which is great because they're perfect for archery.
And so Pop and Young then decided they approved them, decided.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
On a minimum.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Pop and Young minimum is thirteen and fourteen sixteenth, and
then Bunda Crockett minimum is fourteen and five sixteen. And
it's length and width. It's it's simply just like bears
and lions. It's length and with no kind of toss,
no tell me or anything. No, they want to make
it simple on measures. Already know how to do that measurement.
They have the equipment. What's minimum again, minimum for buond

(01:18:31):
to Crocket. Yeah, you'll have to remember that and go
back and measure it measure tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:18:34):
So Hune to.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Crocket is fourteen and five sixteenths Man fourteen five sixteen.
I wish my wife is more handy at that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Kind of I mean, just what if I called it
right now and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
To go measure measure that. Yeah, but it's not going
to go over use what's called the boss square that
they use I think for muskox or or I think,
But it's a square. It's a steel square because the
back of the Havelina skull has a why. Yeah, so
you can't it's not measured in the bottom of that Why,
it's measured absolute total length. So you have to have

(01:19:07):
something square across the back and square across the front,
and then the width is just the zygomatic arches here.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):
Yeah, I'm pretty excited that that that now gets the
respect that that it's always deserved.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
That's great. Uh. I was just gonna ask you about
status of black tailed deer and meal. Let me ask
you about status of have alnas. Yeah. You don't really
hear about this ever. Is it just like our Haveleena
is just sort of always there at the same you
never hear about that it's a great year, it's a

(01:19:41):
bad year, ups and downs.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
Are they just sort of like just they are very
stable overall and and and part of it is they're
they're so adapted to their desert. They're eating a lot
of prickly pear, which not like forbes are coming and
going and wet here and dry. See, prickly pear is
always there. They eat a lot of root tubers. So
some of those plants are more abundant with the rainfall,
but they're still there. They're pretty drought resistant, little very

(01:20:03):
very drought resistant, just kind of chug along. They do
a pretty good job of chugging along and not having
these violent swings up and downs.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
Yeah, got it. So with that, let's about black tail
deer and meal deer. Is there reason to be Let's
let's start with milder. Is there any reason to be
not pessimistic about the future of meal deer.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
Yeah, absolutely, I'm I'm not pessimistic at all.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
Really, Yeah, tell me more. I feel like it's like
always bad, but I hope you feel better by the
time you leave.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
Then it is always bad news, and some of the
bad news comes from just a desire to advocate for
meal there, which I'm one hundred percent on board with.
There's a lot of stresses affecting meal deer in the West,
but meal deer. I chair a meal deer Working Group,
which is for the last twenty years I've been the
chairman of this group that's sponsored by the Western Association

(01:20:59):
of Fish while Agencies. It's twenty four Western wildlife agencies
in western North America provinces and states, and we have
one meal deer or black tail deer expert from each
of those twenty four jurisdictions, and that's the Mealder Working
Group Committee, So it's the West leading meal deer experts
And every year we put together for the eleventh year
now this year Status of milder and black tail deer

(01:21:21):
in North America. And you can't just write one paragraph
about how milder and black tail deer are doing, because
they're doing differently all over and for different reasons, and
so we take a page or two for each jurisdiction,
so you can read about Saskatchewan, you can read about Arizona,
you can read about Montana written by the meal deer
expert in that state, and then we do some summary

(01:21:42):
stuff at the beginning of that, and that gives you
a snapshot of how deer populations are doing. And more
than half of the milder populations are stable or increasing
right now. Some of the rocky Mountain states had a
bad winner of twenty twenty three and then they're recovering
from that. Southwestern states, New Mexico, Arizona are suffering from

(01:22:04):
multi year drought. But we had we had to decline
in the nineteen ninety. It had several declines in meal
deer through time, and the latest one was in nineteen
ninety and that's when the Meal Deer Working Group was established.
Decline Holistic West Wide Decline. Yeah, and that's happened a
couple times. And when you when you look at it

(01:22:25):
in retrospect, when it happened in the nineties, we were like,
what's happening in meal deer? Something is affecting meal there everywhere.
That's what it seemed like, because it seemed to be
declining everywhere. When you look back now at the history,
it's obvious that when you have really wet years in
the desert Southwest, that means a lot of rain, a
lot of forbes in the winter really nutritious, and deer

(01:22:47):
do really well. Reproduction rates go up. But that same
wet winter in the Rocky Mountains might be heavy snowpack
and a harsh winter in the Rocky Mountains. So the
same kind of wet year can make deer population in
the Rocky Mountain states decline and increase in the Southwest.

Speaker 1 (01:23:03):
That's interesting that that same weather pattern can do something.
This is a good one place and bad out of place.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
So you have these different things happening in different regions
of good their range all the time, and then periodically
every couple decades they synchronize. Just by chance, really, they
synchronize where you might have a harsh winter and you've
also have a drought in the southwest and deer population decline,
and so looking back, it looks like just once in
a while, all those regional differences synchronize, and everybody says,

(01:23:31):
oh my god, there's a deer decline in the West,
and that happened in the nineties, and then populations recovered
from that decline, and probably no state or province would
say not many of them would say they have all
the melder they want, they're all below population objective. But
there's no West wide melder decline like you see some
people talking about right now, like it's going down. Arizona

(01:23:55):
after the nineteen nineties declined because the drought had fifteen
years of deady growth, population growth up, and it's just
the last six years or so drop that has caused
that to hook down.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
What made what made the mule deer glory days? Yeah,
good question. That was the weather you called it. That
was like the late sixties, late seventies whatever. Sometime a
long time ago. It was the dear glory days. Yeah,
was that that everything aligned and lifted instead of everything
aligned and declined.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
There was a lot of other things going on at
the time. You know, our deer population, like everything else,
eighteen hundreds or early nineteen twenties declined just because over
exploitation and no management. Then from the twenties to sixties,
West wide deer population generally increased. And during that period
we had now restrictions on harvest, not killing does in
some places or limiting the killing a dose, limiting the harvest.

(01:24:49):
We had ten eighty predator poison and predator control everywhere.
Dropping poison baits everywhere reduced the predation pressure. We had
some wet years in there all and then there was
a lot of logging going on, so we're removing the overstory.
Shrubs are coming up, forbes are growing. It was great
for meal deer. So all of that stuff combined was

(01:25:10):
happening from the twenties and thirties and then into the
fifties and early sixties. So fifties and sixties was like
the heyday of meal deer. We had a lot of
meal there. But that was the result of conditions and
activities that we will never repeat. We can't go back
and do that. We're not going to do that wholesale logging.
We're not going to drop ten eighty baits one every
square mile across the West.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
We're not going to do those things.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
So looking at milder populations in the fifties and sixties
is not the benchmark to compare today's meal there that
was an unusual bubble because of all those things happening.
And then in the seventies we had a mealder decline
coming off of that bubble, and we even had there
was a symposium in Utah in nineteen seventy six that
was about mealder decline in the West, and it was

(01:25:54):
a whole symposium concerned about this decline in the seventies,
then we got rainfall generally in the eighties was a
pretty lush year, and deer populations throughout the West increased
in the eighties. And then if you remember late eighties
nineteen eighty eighties, when Yellowstone burned, there was barges running
around in the Mississippi River because it was so low.
We had a really really bad drought throughout a lot

(01:26:16):
of the West that precipitated this late eighties nineteen nineties
decline that initiated the Meal Deer Working Group at that time.
And so we've gone through these swings for different reasons,
and we've recovered a lot from that nineteen nineties decline,
and now more than half of the jurisdictions are stable,
are increasing, some of them are certainly declining, all of

(01:26:39):
them below objective, but all below objective, i'd say all
of them. I don't know if you'd find many meal
your biologists that say we don't want any more meal there.
We've got enough. You know, the habitat's full. You know,
we're still we're still need to build deer herds almost everywhere,
even though I think Colorado half of the units I
read from that biologists are at population objectives. So there's

(01:27:04):
places where they are, but we're not in dire straits.
There's no West wide mulder decline right now. We're chugging
along in weather conditions, whether it's drought or harsh winners
is causing these annual fluctuations against a backdrop of long
term habitat change. You know, the West looks a little

(01:27:26):
bit different now than it did in nineteen fifty as
far as urban development, urban sprawl, communities, roads, all that stuff.
We're not going back to the nineteen fifties, So we
should not be saying, well, deer populations are such and
such lower than the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
It's not fair. It's not fair to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
But i'm i'm as long as we keep working on
preserving migration corridors, improving habitat on large scales, I think
the future meal there is bright. We're going to keep
chugging along with good mulder herds if we keep paying
attention and doing everything we can.

Speaker 1 (01:28:01):
If if every area is below objective, what do you
think of a what do you think of someone says,
And before I say this, I'll recognize you're arguing for
like a nuanced approach where you have twenty four different
regions and every region has its own story and various factors.
But let's say I come to you and say, generally,

(01:28:22):
should it be that we're not killing female meal deer anymore?

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
We shouldn't be killing dough milder. And see that's on
a unit by unit basis. There's some areas like like
if half of the units in Colorado are at population objective.
Then that's the case where you need to maintain that
population at that in that population objective range. So I
would not I would not outlaw dough hunting throughout the West.
In Arizona when populations got really low, then then dough

(01:28:50):
hunts were removed and so and you see in units,
even within a single state, certain units will have doe
harvest and other units won't. And that's the biologist doing
what they do and managing those populations based on where
they are in relation to objectives.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
And where they need to be.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
God, So I wouldn't broadbrush and say we shouldn't be
killing females. It depends on the area. What about black
tail deer? Black tail deer are harder to survey. They're
doing they're doing pellet counts historically they do they're looking
for sticks yet right, and they use dogs. They'll use
sniffing dogs to find pellets and they'll record all that
they collect. In Alaska they've done a lot of pellet

(01:29:27):
collecting where they they do genetics and they look at
how many individual minimum number of individual deer they have
per square mile based on genetic fingerprints. So they're hard
to they're hard to monitor. They're very susceptible, especially Southeast Alaska,
very susceptible to heavy snow winters. You get those islands,

(01:29:48):
Prince of Whale, all those islands, you get a heavy,
heavy snow winter and you can lose fifty to sixty
percent of the black population. But then in the years
after that they come roaring back. Once the population is down,
there's a lot of food for the remaining animals. Those
populations bounce right back. So they dip and they grow
based on mostly on weather conditions. But then again I

(01:30:10):
said weather conditions in the forefront, and the background is
long term habitat changes. And one of the things in
Sitka Blacktail Range is the logging that was done in
the past that has now all grown up into second growth,
really thick, not very easily marketed for anything commercially. So
we've got it's called stem exclusion or stand exclusion, where

(01:30:32):
the sunlight's not reaching the ground to make forbes and
shrubs that the deer eat. It's just blocking out the light.
So you have all the secondary growth that needs to
be cut. But other than maybe cutting it and making
wood pellets is a possibility, someone needs to commercialize something
to get in there and open up some of that,
But it doesn't mean that the old growth forests in

(01:30:54):
southeast Alaska need to be logged. The old growth forest
is really important for the same reason those big old
trees they stop the snowfall, and in heavy snowfall events,
the deer that have to have that mature old growth
force to go in and move around and feed a
little bit until the snow melts enough that they can
go back out into clear cuts in some of the
places with more food. So the old growth forest is

(01:31:16):
really important. And then that stem exclusion is keeping that
habitat from having more food than it could have if
it was if it was managed better. So that stuff's
going on in the background of these annual blacktail fluctuations.

Speaker 1 (01:31:30):
You know those clear cuts there, they're so good for
ten years or whatever in that country. They're so good
for deer for ten years, and then they're so terrible
for deer. Yeah when they grow for thirty or forty. Yeah,
for forty when there's a new one, you're like, that's

(01:31:52):
cool now, but man, then it's just gonna suck. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
And even if they leave, if they go in and
leave a lot of slash and horizon of logs, it
becomes an issue of deer not being able to move
around as well either in some of those clear cuts.

Speaker 1 (01:32:05):
Yeah, it's is total obstacle. Course. Yeah. So Chairmanship of
the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Meal Deer
Working Group.

Speaker 2 (01:32:13):
Yeah, how long a you been doing that? Twenty eight years?
I was one of the original I'm the only remaining
original member that was approved by the Western directors in
nineteen ninety seven. Our first meeting was in ninety eight
and Jackson, Wyoming. About eight years later, the chairman retired
and passed the torch to me. So I've been chairman
for twenty years. And if you go on to see

(01:32:33):
what we've been up to for twenty years or twenty
eight years, We've got a a website Meal Deerworkinggroup dot com.
It's just all one word Meal Deer Working Group, and
you see a lot of publications on there. And what
we put together is like we established we'd established seven
ecoregions in North America that were related to meal deer
management and meal deir ecology, and we produce habitat guidelines

(01:32:56):
for each one of those seven ecoregions.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
So a practitioner on the ground.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
A BLM biologists in the Southwest deserts can pull out
the Southwest deserts to have that guidelines and read about
what deer need to thrive in the Southwest desert or
the coastal rainforest.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
We've done that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
We produced other documents about disease concerns translocating wildlife. We
produce the North American Milder Conservation Plan, which which guided
conservation in a very general way throughout the West. And
with that plan, we wrote an MoU and we had
the Chief of the Force Service, the director of the BLM,
and about seven agency heads signed this MoU saying that

(01:33:31):
their documents, their forest management plans, their BLM resource management
plans would incorporate these things and be consistent with the
North American Milder Conservation Plan. So if anybody, any local biologists,
said we're not going to do that, we said, well,
your director says that you're going to do things that
are consistent with what milder need and blacktail deer need,

(01:33:51):
and we're revamping that now. But we've got a guidance
document on if you're monitoring milder populations, here's some of
them metrics you should monitor and here's some advantages and
disadvantages of monitoring them different ways, kind of for biologists.
We did something on movements and migration barriers to a movement,

(01:34:13):
and that website has all of these documents as a
PDF and a lot of the meal there Working group
members then contributed to our latest mealder book, that big
one that you have, the black one that you have,
where there's eighty two chapters and each eighty two co authors,
twenty three chapters, and each chapter is written by the
national expert for that particular topic with a team of writers.

(01:34:34):
It's all the latest mealder and black tailed deer information.
And the meal Deer Working Group had us and a
lot of our friends that are working on meal deer
work on that book.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
Yeah, if you want to be the guy in your
circle that knows the most about mule deer black tails,
you should get that book and memorize it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
It's got to beat everybody. It's comprehensive. Yeah, sure you.
So this is a funny one.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
You recently went into to New Zealand to speak about
servid conservation. But they're I mean, I feel like they
spend more energy trying to get rid of wildlife. They absolutely.
Do they spend more energy trying to get rid of
wild not wildlife, but more than you trying to get
rid of hooved animals. Yeah, there's no No one talks

(01:35:21):
in New Zealand about conservation. I know, it's like gloves
off as it should be. Yeah, like the helicopter goun them,
you know what I mean, It's like they're not they're
not They're not trying to make robust populations for hunters
to be able to go out and do this meeting
was It happens every four years somewhere around the world.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
So it's been in China, been in Peru. I'm in
the Czech Republic. I helped organize the one in twenty
eighteen in ss Park, Colorado. We had it in the US,
and this year I rotated. It was in Croatia four
years ago, in New Zealand this time. And I don't
get I got to go to the Colorado one because
I helped organize it and it was in a neighboring state.
My department's not going to send me to China and

(01:35:58):
to Peru, and so I didn't think I was gonna
be able to the New Zealand one.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
And they asked me.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
It's called the International Deer Biology Congress, and they asked
me to be a keynote speaker with the expenses paid.
So I was able to finally get to an international
version of that, and I went there and I talked
about how we manage deer and elk all service in
North America amid the mosaic of BLM land, forest land,
private land, National Park Service land, and you have biologists

(01:36:27):
for all those different agencies and around that, and then
you have funding, all these different funding sources for conservation,
and among this mess that we have in North America,
we somehow have this beautiful, well functioning system that works
really really well. So that was my keynote address in
New Zealand at that talk. But it was interesting because

(01:36:48):
that conference sponsored by the New Zealanders. That conference, the title,
the theme of that conference was your deer here, and
it was about New Zealand didn't have any deer. It
was all of our deer that were in New Zealand.
It just said our deer, your deer here. And And
so there was talks about trying to raty they're they're

(01:37:11):
poisoning brushtail possums, they're poisoning white tails in some areas
with poisons to control them.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
Yeah, it's it's like when.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
You go there, you don't need you don't need a
hunting license on public land they're poisoning, which it makes
me feel kind of strange, but they're talking about endangered
plants and trying to save what eco, what native ecosystem
they had. They had they had three there's reports between
one and three mammals that were native to New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (01:37:41):
And there were bats.

Speaker 2 (01:37:42):
Yeah, and there was one bat that was there and there
was another I think the other ones were fossils of
bat species. So they had no mammals, basically no predators
at all. And they had they had nine different species
of moa, these nine foot the largest one with nine
foot flightless birds running around the island. Anesians got there
I think eight hundred years ago and it only took

(01:38:03):
them about one hundred years ago, one hundred years to
wipe out.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
All of the MOA's on the island.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
And the only thing big You imagine you're on an
island and you've got nine foot chickens running around. I
mean they used them.

Speaker 1 (01:38:16):
They they had been egg harvest too. Man, Yeah, oh
I bet yeah, because that's like to do.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
So there was eight or nine different species of servants
that were brought to New Zealand from different places in
the world, and they still have most of them. I
was surprised to hear at the meeting they brought moose
one hundred years ago. Teddy Roosevelt was involved in some
of the trains locations they brought moose, and I was
surprised to hear some people talking about maybe there being

(01:38:41):
a couple of moose.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
Still that I've heard that there's rumors of that.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
It seems kind of like their Bigfoot, their version of
Bigfoot is what it seems like.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
It's never any proof, but there's there's reports. Well, like
it's got to be. And I hunted there, you know,
in the sense I got from the guys in that
community is the same when I get when I'm hanging
out with Hawaiians. Is uh. They've built the whole culture
and lifestyle around big game hunt. Yeah, right, And so

(01:39:10):
a lot of the people it's it's funny because you
get this idea here that you know, you get this
idea here that that you know, like like whatever that
the tree huggers want to save the deer. You know
or something, but at hiss like the tree huggers want
the tree huggers want to be dead. Dude.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
We have a We have a representative on the Milder
Working Group from Hawaii, and that's because in nineteen sixty
one they brought some Columbian blacktail from Oregon and put
them on Kawai in the Island of Kawai, and they're
still there and they're hunted and the locals that like
the deer hunt like them, so they're not eradicating them.
But like the We had a meeting in Hawaii once

(01:39:49):
and I asked the Hawaiian representative for the Mealier Working Group.
I said, do you finally get to go to a
meeting because we're here in Hawaii And he said, no,
I've gotten an endangered plant meeting I got to be at.
He said, Honestly, we're not looking to conserve and increase
our deer. He said, like, like, there's fifty different species
in their diet and almost all of them are in

(01:40:09):
dangered plant species. We don't want more. We don't want
more of them. It's an interesting different perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
One of the conversations that sticks to me most wasn't
new Zealand, but it was in Hawaii. But it was
around the same issue as I was talking to a
native Hawaiian, Okay, like an ancestral Hawaiian or like an
ethnic I don't know what you call it, like a Hawaiian,
not a guy who lives in Hawaii, but a but
a native Hawaiian. And you know, historically, the idea is

(01:40:35):
that when when the Polynesians, when the Polynesians arrived in
Hawaii sometime around eleven hundred years ago, they brought they
brought this menagerie of things with them and including pigs. Right,
the pigs have been there a long time. And he
was sharing with me and goes, how can I be native?
I am native, but the pigs that my people brought

(01:40:57):
in the same connection, they gotta go but I'm native. Wow.
And his take was he didn't want His take was
he didn't need outsiders, you know, he didn't need howleies
coming and telling him what animals belonged on the island.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
That's such an important part of their culture. It's not
just like an animal, whether it needs to be there
or not. It's part of the culture. It's part of them.

Speaker 1 (01:41:24):
Was it was just so offensive to him. Yeah, this
conversation that like, oh no, no, your native mad respect,
but your pigs. Yeah, gotta go get him out of here.
Ye did you hunt New Zealand last?

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
Yeah? I have Yeah, I have friend Pete Caldwell. I
met in a few years prior to that, and he
said he knew about the New Zealand Deer meeting. He said,
if you get to that meeting, he said, let's go
out and do something fun. And so the meeting was
over and my son Levi and I and Pete took
us out along with another guy, pa Ellen from Sweden,

(01:41:58):
big Swedish guy.

Speaker 1 (01:41:59):
We went out and.

Speaker 2 (01:42:02):
We did a little blitzkrieg about two days of hunting,
staying out there, staying in one of the old hunting
shacks that was more than one hundred years old probably,
and we shot red deer and we shot tar. We
shot brush tailed possum shot. I got a European hair,
European rabbit, which excites jack rabbit gym. Be able to

(01:42:22):
get some European European hairs. Almost got a feral house cat,
but I couldn't couldn't get my sights fast enough. They
Bete was with me and he's like He's like, get
get in a position, Get in a position, and I'm like,
what what what is it?

Speaker 1 (01:42:37):
What's over there? It's a cat? Hurry up.

Speaker 2 (01:42:39):
He was like really excited about getting the cane. It's
slunk away away right, that would have been interesting. Gripp
and grin o SunShot of Wallaby. Wallaby's are hated. I
mean the yeah, they're cute. My wife says, you're not
shooting wallaby and I didn't, but LEVI didn't have but
they're on the extermination list. Oh yeah, big time, big

(01:42:59):
time there. The brows line when we were up in
those mountains, the brows line was just tremendous, like everything
gone from from three and a half feet down, just
like dirt, everything eating with tars up there and the
wallaby's feat didn't even want us shooting at a wallaby
because he was afraid we'd miss. He wanted to make
sure that that thing hit the ground.

Speaker 1 (01:43:21):
It was in a new.

Speaker 2 (01:43:21):
Area, that it was a really nice area and they're
starting to pioneer into that area and so like every
pioneer needs to go.

Speaker 1 (01:43:28):
He was adamant a lot of hutting.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
Me.

Speaker 1 (01:43:30):
Yeah, what I had fun there man hunting there, But
the reason I couldn't get into it for like I
couldn't get into like to consider going back or anything.
Is that the non native aspect of it. Yeah, that
it's not it's not like a heritage thing. Yeah, it's

(01:43:50):
like a giant. They came in on a boat. There's
not like a human hunting heritage there. It was just
it was it was hunting without hunting without cultural history,
hunting without wildlife history, and it just like I had fun,
but there was just something gone. And another thing that
really struck me is the no predators on the landscape. Yeah, right,

(01:44:16):
there was something about it. And I don't want to
hack like like you know, I mean, this isn't meant
to disparage dudes in New Zealand's just an observation from
a guy fire away. That doesn't matter. But I just
there's certain things that were missing that I didn't know
meant so much to me.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):
Yeah, And sheep raising is such a huge part of
New Zealand culture. Sheep raising, so you can imagine how
interested they are bringing a compliment of predators over to control.

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
There's not gonna happen. Whenever I'm in Hawaii, I always
think like some parts of Hawaii, the dry side like Kona.
You know, I was like, dude, if you turn a
rattlesnake out here, he'd love it. Not that I would
do that, but you know, you think about like there's
certain predators who just love New Zealand. Ye, but it's
not gonna happen. Well, Jim Heffelfinger, thanks for joining, man.
I enjoyed it. I always enjoy coming back. Appreciate all

(01:45:03):
your work on behalf of American wildlife and also just
the effort you take as a as a as a scientist,
the effort you take to come and talk to just
Joe blow outdoor people, Joe Blow hunters and anglers and
try to help them ask the right questions understand what

(01:45:23):
they're reading. I think that's see you through the noise
and follow wildlife and be like a concerned be a
concerned resource user. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:45:34):
I've written a lot of magazine articles and I enjoy
and I think I've honed the skill of taking complex
scientific stuff and just explaining it so that anybody can
understand it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:44):
And I think that's valuable.

Speaker 2 (01:45:45):
So I'm driven by the desire to provide reliable, unbiased
information and let people just learn from that.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
Yep, well till next time. Thank you, yeah, thanks

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 899: Jim Heffelfinger, The Deer Preacher